


Breakdown

by jiminthetardis



Series: The Brink of Destruction [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-27
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:58:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1528862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jiminthetardis/pseuds/jiminthetardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second installment of The Brink of Destruction. Spike envisioned himself becoming a poet. The universe had other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakdown

Spike had started out writing poetry. He’d spent countless late nights hunched over his desk, scrawling line after hopeless line only to crumble the paper into a ball and toss it in the bin. His poetry was awful. Even he could tell. Not even his mother could bring herself to compliment his work. Instead, when he’d presented her with a handmade Mother’s Day card, she laughed in his face and thrown it into the fire.

That had been the start of his so-called “mommy issues.”

His mother had taken to calling him names shortly after he was toilet trained--which had taken some time since his mother hadn’t been very patient with him. Twat, she called him. Tit, pussy, bitch-boy, eejit--even Billy no-mates. The latter was her favorite.

“How fitting it is that you’re named William, Billy no-mates. It’s almost as if I could see what an utter disgrace you’d be.”

He’d tried not to take the insults personally. He had never known much about his mother--he had no idea what kind of life she’d had before him. In most cases, he’d tried giving her the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes he felt a surge of affection toward her, maybe even love. He’d reach out to touch her.

She’d slap him and scream. She’d call him a pervert. She’d leave him alone in the house for days, neither telling him where she’d gone nor when she’d be back.

Spike had learned he had to fend for himself.

Devoid of a mother’s love, he’d also learned that the world was cruel. He’d responded to it in kind. When he was bullied at school, called a poof and a nancy, he bloodied their noses. He stood up for himself. He fought back, and beyond that, he terrorized people. Whispers in the hallway dubbed him “William the Bloody.”

The blood on his clothes was seldom his.

After his mother died, he became an alcoholic. He drank the days away until he passed out. The drink made him angry, careless, impulsive. It brought out his inherently savage yearnings. He went out into the streets and picked a fight. The man ended up dead, impaled on a fence.

“Spike,” the voices dubbed him, and Spike he remained.

He signed on as a Ranger with the hope that he could change. He felt every bit a monster; as deadly as the kaiju, but somehow more damned. He wondered if he’d lost his soul. He deserved to die, he reasoned. Why not die in a jaeger?

He fell in love with his copilot, a woman named Drusilla. She was a lover and a dreamer and she saw his true potential. She wasn’t a monster, she said, he’d simply never been loved. When they drifted together, he kept her from seeing the darkest corner of his memories. He shielded her from pain because she was too fragile. He didn’t think her mind would be able to withstand it.

It was in the heat of battle that Spike discovered how accurate he’d been. The kaiju had pushed the jaeger and its pilots to the brink of their destruction, nearly surpassing their physical limits. He wasn’t sure how it happened, or why it happened, but somehow he lost his control on the drift. His mind wandered, surging violently back to the darkest recesses. He remembered his mother. In the same instant, he felt Dru’s screaming horror, shock, agony, repulsion--her mind was on fire, her brain was burning--the neural tie shattered.

After the battle, Drusilla lived, but her mind, they told Spike, would not be the same. She spoke in gibberish and refused to look him in the eye when he visited her. She screamed whenever he tried to touch her. All of it had been too much.

She was released on an honorable discharge.

Three years passed before he drifted again.


End file.
